09-10-2021, 04:42 PM
selaphiel
All it would take is a simple shake of his head, an apology, a lopsided smile.
But he cannot help her piece together an explanation without knowing the story and how his heart aches to help! Because her pleas had cut right to the core of him, sunk teeth into the meat of his heart, tethered him to her whether she had meant for them to or not.
He had not been able to give her a real answer and he is desperate to make himself useful to her in some other way. The same way he had been desperate to make himself to Mazikeen.
(This is different, of course, but the feeling is the same.)
She does not meet his gaze when she begins to speak, recalling the sequence of events that had led to the separation, and he listens intently, those pale blue eyes fixed firmly on her downturned face. A dark voice.
(He thinks briefly of his own father, the dark god, and makes a conscious effort not to attribute this voice to him.)
A dark, angry voice. And then creatures had risen from the darkness. He thinks of the things that had lurked in the shadows during the eclipse, how they had ravaged the landscape. How every corner of Beqanna still reeks of death because of the devastation they had wrought, but he does not mention them. He merely listens.
He remembers how the dark things had come for him, too, once and his heart twinges and spasms with sympathy. Had they killed her? Had they killed her and somehow dumped her body here in the forest? Had a healer come along and breathed life back into her, the same way his mother had breathed life back into Mazikeen?
She calls attention to the hound and he follows her gaze to the creature, nodding to indicate that he has digested all that she has told him. He hesitates in the silence that follows, throat tight, uncertain if he should tell her the truth.
“I can smell it,” he murmurs, as if saying it quietly will somehow protect her from the gravity of it, “death.” He meets her eye briefly before he slides his pale gaze away again. “You smell of death but not in any way that I have ever smelled it before.” He pauses to take a breath. “I don’t know what it means, I’m sorry.”
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
